Capitalism (2025) by Sven Beckert

 Book Review

Capitalism: A Global History (2025)

by Sven Beckert

  I don't care about money all that much, but I'm obsessed with Capitalism, particularly the history of capitalism.  I'm also a fan of historian Sven Beckert- I really liked his Empire of Cotton, which I read back in 2019.  I also enjoyed his anthology Slavery's Capitalism, which I read in anticipation of the release of this book.   As much as I'm interested in any single subject in world history it is the history of capitalism.  Beckert's effort is laudable and about as good as any book for a general readership which takes in this entire subject in one volume is going to get.

 Much of what Beckert seeks to establish is the global part- recognizing that capitalism is NOT just something that happened during the industrial revolution in northwest Europe.  Beckert identifies an idea of the pre-modern capitalism of "nodes" or islands, of merchant driven capitalism that extend back to the dawn of civilization, in places like Oman, India and Venice.  These were physically small places where capitalism was defined by long-distance trade, and its exponents were merchants. 

 He then moves to what is probably the most important, and least well understood chapter, the era of "War Capitalism" which lay-people know as the colonial period, where western polities (and later, Japan) expanded into the New World and Africa and established a commodity-production model of capitalism that relied heavily on clearing land of indigenous peoples and replacing them with huge, single product plantations powered by slave labor.  Historically, defenders of capitalism sought to distance it from this epoch, but Becker relies on a half-century of scholarship which places War Capitalism and slavery at the center of the world-capitalist experience. 

 The War Capitalist chapter is really the high-point, with Beckert synthesizing a lot of scholarship that may be unfamiliar to a casual reader.  After that, everything gets pretty predictable:  The initial industrial revolution, the second aka "Fordist" industrial revolution, the rise of consumer capitalism, etc.  There wasn't much after the war capitalism chapters that really held my attention but it is hard not to appreciate Beckert's ability to make a dry subject (economic history) come to life for something resembling a general audience.

Summer of Fire and Blood (2025) by Lyndal Roper

 Audiobook Review

Summer of Fire and Blood (2025)

by Lyndal Roper

    Billed as "the first history of the German Peasant's War in a generation," Summe of Fire and Blood delivers on the promise, bringing the English language historiography of this poorly understood episode in early modern German history into the present.  It was also a great Audiobook snag- the kind of book I'm really looking for in the Libby app.  The problem with being interested in a subject like "Early Modern German history" is primarily that most of it is written in German.  What is written in English is always going to be heavily weighted towards the academic//specialist market.   I thought going in that this was a German language translation, but no, it is apparently true that the first history of the German Peasant's War in a generation was written English.

   The use of the 'German Peasants War' (instead of German Peasants Revolt, which is what I grew up with) should tell you about the perspective of the author- it's very James Scott/David Graeber, looking at things from the bottom up and trying to tell the story of people who weren't well educated and didn't write everything down.   Roper goes hard on the origins, motives and the heady days when various bands of roving peasants were able to sack unguarded Monasteries and bully townsfolk into submission.  They were benefited from the generally chaotic political situation in German speaking areas- polities were split between conventional nobility, church-run states and independent towns. 

  The ruling authorities didn't seem to be particularly aware that such a thing as a peasant revolt on a large-scale was even possible.   Of course, gradually the nobility got their act together and when it finally came to peasant armies vs. the military of the early modern era, the peasants got crushed.  The payback was brutal- which Roper covers but doesn't really dwell upon.   Surely there is a Foucauldian take that would emphasis the payback portion over the war itself.

Capitalism and Its Critics (2025) by John Cassidy

Audiobook Review

 Capitalism and Its Critics: A History:

 From the Industrial Revolution to AI (2025)

by John Cassidy

    I read about Capitalism and Its Critics in the New York Times, where Jennifer Szalai wrote an excellent review.  Cassidy is best known as a writer on economic topics for the New Yorker.  Both the review and Cassidy's pedigree gave me the idea that this would make a great Audiobook and sure enough, nine months later, I was able to check out a copy of the Audiobook from the Los Angeles Public Library.

  And reader, I was rewarded.  Capitalism and Its Critics is as accesible as it is interesting, and while Cassidy treads no new territory, he does an excellent job of summarizing centuries of economic thought while sparing the reader/listener from reading any of these often-obtuse authors.  More then once while listening to Capitalism and Its Critics I was struck by the thought that it is the eternal fate of the most famous economists to see their work mis-understood and applied by people who haven't read their work.  I'd wager most readers would associate criticism of capitalism with the "Left" as defined by a line of thinkers following in the footsteps of Karl Marx, but Cassidy reveals just as many critics from the "Right." The major difference is that most of the critics from the left, at least up until the time of Keynes, were persecuted, whereas critics from the right tended to end up in power or see their acolytes in power.

  Two themes that Cassidy hammers home are:

1)  Capitalism lives in a perpetual state of crisis.

2)  The idea of a Capitalism existing outside of a State made legal framework is ridiculous.

   Thus, his major criticism of critics from the right is that they live in a fantasy of the free market that is nothing short of fantastic, while at the same time allowing Dictators and Authoritarian strongmen into their tent under the guise of limiting state action in the economy (see Chile).  Meanwhile, he accurately points out that critics from the left have simply been wrong in that they start from a premise that the contradictions inherent in capitalist activity will inevitably lead to the collapse of capitalism.

   He also breathes life into figures I would have considered minor players before reading this book- Karl Polanyi and Joan Robinson to name two and he also develops time periods that don't get much attention in the west- specifically the period of Russian economic thought between the Russian Revolution and the ascension of Stalin.   Even if, like me, you are largely familiar with the history of capitalism without being a specialist or expert, you will find the writing engaging.

    

Medicine River (2025) by Mary Annete Pember

 Audiobook Review

Medicine River:  A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools (2025)

by Mary Annete Pember

    I listened to this Audiobook because I am interested in the subject of Indian Boarding Schools.  Basically, for decades American authorities took Native American children away from their families and put them in boarding schools where they were taught to deny their heritage, speak English and frequently were subject to abuse and ill-health.  After returning home they frequently suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and a perpetual feeling of estrangement from their community.

   Pember blends some of this history with her personal experience as the daughter of a woman who went to an Indian Boarding School.  Spoiler alert, there is a lot of family trauma in this book.

  

Murderland (2025) by Caroline Fraser

 Audiobook Review

Murderland (2025)

by Caroline Fraser

  Murderland has an interesting and persuasive thesis: That the spike in serial killing in the 60's and 70's was directly related to industrial activity poisoning children with lead and other toxic substances.  Fraser combines this narrative with capsule biographies of famous American serial killers- Ted Bundy gets most of the ink in Murderland. Fraser also intertwines her own memories of a girlhood in the Tacoma era- the epicenter for factory pollution and serial killers.  The business part of the story is familiar- Mid 20th century capitalism pursues profit at the expense of the environment.  I presume those who are interested in serial killers will know much of that stuff to- I'm not, and I don't know much about Bundy, so I found that bit interesting- Bundy was an audacious killer- he kind of embodies every stereotype that parents fear and his targets were anything but women on the margin of society.   Fraser's memoir material didn't do much for me. 

Slavery's Capitalism (2016) edited by Sven Beckert

 Audiobook Review

Slavery's Capitalism (2016)

edited by Sven Beckert

   One of the interesting by-products of the state-by-state, geographical approach of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America, is that it really awakens an interest in the underlying history itself.  Since I've been reading about the south now for almost a year, naturally I've become interested in the history of the region, and specifically the economics of slavery.  The economics of slavery were a central to concern to both pro and anti-slavery forces until the matter was settled during the Civil War, and then after that both sides continued to make use of their propaganda-type arguments, which further obscured rational discussion and investigation of these issues.

  Both sides played their part.  Obviously, proponents of the Southern side do not want to dwell on the real economics of slavery- the whole idea is to drape the past with a gauze that softens the edges.  However, the North also did it's part, in that generations of Northern scholars have ignored or hidden the dramatic links between slavery in the American south and Northern capitalism.   I can attest to that based on my own trips to the Northeast, where I've visited a variety of history museums and read a handful of economic history books looking for scholars who make what seem like obvious connections. 

  Mostly what this book does is say these obvious things in print.  The format is uneven- it reads like a graduate level seminar where each participant submitted one chapter- many of the individual essays read almost like school projects, so mostly the value here is seeing the broad themes outlined in economic terms.  Specifically, you've got the economic ties between the slave holding south and northern (and European capitalism), they dynamic inside the south, namely the shift that occurred when the FOREIGN slave trade was abolished in 1808.  This book reveals the black line marking one era from the next.  Most Americans- and I'm talking the educated ones here, not the idiots, think only of this first part- the slavery of transatlantic importation of slaves.  Crucially though it is the second part- where slaves moved out of the older societies of Maryland and Virginia southward, culminating in the Cotton Boom of the early 19th century in present day Alabama and Mississippi.

 This is the distinctly American slavery this is more important to most African Americans, novelists and scholars. Both of modes of slavery where insanely cruel, but it was the trade within the United States that has really been highlighted for me both by this book and by the books in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.

Little Bosses Everywhere (2025) by Bridget Read

 Audiobook Review

Little Bosses Everywhere: 

How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America (2025)

by Bridget Read

  I try to keep at least one non-fiction Audiobook in my Libby mix at all times.  Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America, has been on and off my metaphorical libby loan shelf a half dozen times over the past year, and I finally knocked it off during the break.  I've had an interest in pyramid schemes and multi-level marketing since I started work in the world of federal criminal defense as an attorney.  One of my first tasks was reviewing physical documents at the Boiler Room Taskforce in Mission Valley, San Diego, CA.  This was for a telemarketing scam, but the documents I reviewed contained "training materials" that led me to explore this nefarious world.

 Multi-Level Marketing, as Read details exhaustively, is here to stay, and the second and third generations of some of the founding families of MLM are familiar to anyone who knows Cabinet level appointments in the Trump administrations, one and two.  The roots of multi-level marketing are in the idea of the pyramid scheme, which is an actual event that happened in the US, and not just a generic term to describe a type of scheme to defraud.  The history, in fact, goes quite deep, and spans the country, and, in fact, the entire world at this point.

  I knew many of the details, and found the personal stories of the victims (Read doesn't talk to many winners, if any) pretty tedious, but Read, despite her stated thesis that all multi-level marketing is scam, does point to the reason that MLM's endure despite their scam status- which is that people drop out, in fact, everyone who isn't a "winner" under the system drops out, and the winners maintain their status because they can source new people to recruit.  That is 100% the key to success in any MLM, finding new leads and converting them.

  There was an interesting chapter near the end where Read discusses the newest iteration of this world, the growth of "life coaches" or "mentors" as entrees to the MLM business.  Certainly, this seems like something that would be facilitated greatly by all Social Meida platforms, and it strikes me that is more or less a valid way for such people to make money.

The Far Edges of the Known World (2025) by Owen Rees

 Book Review

The Far Edges of the Known World:

 Life Beyond the Borders of Ancient Civilization (2025)

by Owen Rees

   If there were more books in this category: general reader level history books about ancient history, I would for sure read them, but the fact is that the underlying research doesn't require more than one new book a decade in most subfields.   Reading everything there is available to a non-specialist about events on the fringes of so-called western "civilization" in English, in the United States, is not hard.  Rees summarizes recent research in areas on the margins of the ancient greco-roman world.   He also includes a section on Europe, and some of the most interesting material is written about modern day Ethiopia. Like all books published in American on this area of interest, the lack of foreign language knowledge condemns the author to reinforce the very historical near-sightedness he seeks to correct.  To take the example of ancient Ethiopia, he doesn't appear to have read anything in Ge'ez.

  Anyway, it is interesting to be sure but nothing mind blowing here, like, I kinda knew what was coming.

Rot(2025) by Padraig X.Scanlan

 Audiobook Review

Rot (2025)

by Padraig X. Scanlan

   The reviews this week are running in January, but they actually represent the end of 2024.  I spent the entire year listening to this Audiobook with months in between (the library only had one Audiobook copy for the entire system).  I checked it out after last year's visit to Ireland, where I noted locals referring to the "Irish Potato Genocide" rather than the "Irish Potato Famine" as we were all taught in school.   I thought it would be interesting to review the scholarship in this area, and Rot does a good job of summarizing recent scholarship for a general reading audience.  

  I thought I had a good idea of where Scanlan would be headed based on similar arguments I've read in the area of Native American history and the history of the Southern United States.  Like many of the arguments that surround the post-erradication campaign attempts of the United States Government to "Kill the Indian and Save the Man," many of the Governmental policies described here as genocidal (he doesn't actually use that phrase) were extremely poorly thought out attempts to "help" the Irish.  Specifically, to help them become good capitalist members of the British Empire, by eradicating the potato, which the rural Irish used as a hedge against the vagaries of the market economy.

   As Scanlan well demonstrates, the Irish were anything BUT outliers from contemporary market economics, rather they were only two well acquainted with the most rapacious aspects of modern market capitalism courtesy of the complicated system of land rights, which had all the unpredictably of modern stock trading in terms of its impact on the rural proletariat.  The Irish peasantry was also roundly betrayed by their elites, who were all either actual British colonialists or the product of families who were long-time collaborators.  

How the Word is Passed (2022) by Clint Smith

 Audiobook Review

How the Word is Passed (2022)

by Clint Smith

  I highly recommend the Monuments exhibit at MOCA-Geffen in Los Angeles- one of the best museums exhibits I've seen in the past decade.   This exhibit features several "decommissioned" Confederate War memorials (mostly from Baltimore) with companion pieces by contemporary artists.  While we were there, my partner mentioned this book, which I strangely was only barely aware of, despite immersing myself in the literature of the deep south for the past six months.  Smith's method is that of an essayist, each chapter takes him to a different location in the South where he takes a tour, talks to the people who work there and other tourists, and contrasts the opinions of those people with his own and gives it the perspective of his own research as a scholar of the period.

   Every chapter is interesting for different reasons.  Smith is an excellent writer and the entire experience reminded me of a Southern-US focused Teju Cole.  After seeing the exhibit and listening to the book, it's impossible to not see the connection between the two.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if  How the Word is Passed didn't directly inspire Monuments.  The basic thesis of both works is that southern whites have systematically perpetuated ideas that seek obscure and diminish the truths of the experience of slavery.  I love Monuments, and I loved this book, but at the same time it is hard to ignore (as Smith does) the fact that he himself embraces and embodies an academic tradition synonymous with "cultural relativism." 

  Throughout How the Word is Passed Smith performs an interesting double move that saturates the entire book and indeed many of the novels I've read as part of the 1,001 Novels Project which can be best described this way:

1.  Until the Civil Rights movement there was only a limited critique of the Antebellum South AND contemporary conditions in the south.

2.  The Civil Rights movement forced the abandonment/revision of overt, legally sanctioned racisms by the Governments of the South.

3.  The emergence of cultural relativism in American universities allowed scholar to go back and properly diagnose the earlier period and create a comprehensive critique of the Antebellum South and its universe of horrors.

  However, this third point can hardly be said to have penetrated into the hearts and minds of everyday people living in the south, and the idea that Smith can waltz into these places, and act surprised that educated and non-educated Southerners have different ideas is frequently risible.  It's preaching to the converted, is what I'm saying.  But as one of the converted, I found it this book very illuminating.

Revisiting: The Conquest of the Last Maya Kingdom

 Revisiting:  The Conquest of the Last Maya Kingdom

     I like this post because at some point I added on two paragraphs from a lost review of The World of the Huns by Otto Maenchen-Helfen.   Reviewing and editing the larger post, Collected Writing on World History:  2007-2011, it was impossible to ignore the number of books related to Meso-America, Mayans and Aztecs and others as well.  Also, ancient Iran.  Related to the imminent collapse of my marriage? Perhaps. 

Published 10/9/11
The Conquest of the Last Maya Kingdom
by Grant D. Jones
p. 1998
Stanford University Press

    I just finished reading another book by this author on the Maya. Specifically, Maya Resistance to Spanish Rule: Time and History on a Colonial Frontier. That book ends where this one picks up, i.e. the conquest of the last Maya Kingdom at the end of the 17th century. It's what I would call a Werner Herzogian story, replete with forced labor, needless death, insane ambition and pointless conquest. In fact, I'm a little surprised that Herzog never made a movie about this story, but that might be explained by the fact that the first book written on the subject since the conquest itself WAS PUBLISHED IN 1998. How's that for forgotten history?
    The last Mayan Kingdom was located around the area of Lake Peten Itza. At the time of initial European contact, the Mayans lived in a bunch of related Kingdoms on the Yucatan peninsula. The main Kingdom at the time of the original contact was known as Chichen Itza, the present day Mexican city of Merida, but basically there were several Kingdoms extending through much of southern Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. Some of these Kingdoms had been strongly influenced by the Mexica/Aztec vibe, others were more traditionally Mayan.
    When the Spanish arrived, they immediately instituted their system of forced labor- resembling European feudalism. Quite sensibly, this spurred migration by the Mayans from the North to the South. Allegedly the rulers of the last Mayan Kingdom had themselves emigrated from the North within the last century, but they co-existed with local Mayan speakers who had never left.
    This complicated territorial dynamic between the newcomers, and the never-lefts was something that the Spaniards never really understood, and since this is the first book length treatment of this subject EVER, it's fair to say that until Jones spoke up, no one else understood it either.
    The last Mayan Kingdom was ruled in complex fashion. There were five sets of paired kings/high priests, four of which ruled for the communities living to the north/south/east/west of the capital. The last pair ruled the capital itself. It's quite clear from Jones' source material that the time immediately preceding and succeeding the Spanish conquest of the last Mayan Kingdom was a time of civil war among the Maya- and that this civil war prevented the Maya from implementing a coherent strategy of resistance.
    Various factions among the Maya advocated radically different strategies. The main/central King was what you would call an accommodationist- to the point where he sent a nephew of his north- in secret- to be converted to Christianity and pledge loyalty to the Spanish King. A couple years later this created an awkward scene when the Spaniards showed up and gave him European style clothes symbolizing the submission of the entire Kingdom to the Spanish.
    As you could imagine, this created conflict among the other four Kings- none of whom were aware of what the central King had done. Thus, after this point- which is still a year or two before the conquest, the "main" Mayan King basically lost all authority over his own people and created a climate where conflict between Mayans who wanted to resist and those who wanted to accommodate.
    There were several skirmishes before the final invasion- skirmishes marked by Spanish missionaries and the odd soldier being attacked and having their heart ripped out. When the Spanish finally did conquer the capital- an island city in lake Peten Itza- it was a fucking disaster marked by famine and plague. At the same time, there was a lengthy period of civil war among the Itza themselves- specifically between those who helped the Spanish survive and those who wanted the Spanish to leave.
    In the end, the area wouldn't recover until outside immigration picked up in the 1950s. The invasion itself happened in 1699- so we're talking about three and half centuries of recovery time. As I said- it's a Herzogian story. Someone ought to make a movie. What's Mel Gibson doing?
    Attila and his Horde didn't much persist after the death of the man himself. Part of the problem is that the Hunnic hordes, being poly-ethnic, didn't have a "nation state" mentality- more like a "we are only going to stick around until we can get the hell out of here." Thus, after Attila's death, the Goths- serving as his lieutenants, rebelled against his successors and started their own statelets. Also, Germanic speaking peoples were pushed into Europe from the Russian plains in an attempt to flee the Huns.
    Prior to the hey day of Attila, the Huns were often paired with the Alans- an Iranian language speaking people from the Northern Caucuses. However, after 400 AD the Alans split with the Huns and settled in Southern France and the Balkans, where they were a potential source of Zoarastrian/Cathar ideas in Europe.
    As to the ethnic/racial/linguistic characteristics of the Huns, Maenchen-Helfen, comes down on the side of the Huns being poly-racial- being a mix of "Mongoloid" and "Europoid" peoples, but speaking a Turkic language. SO NOW YOU KNOW

Revisiting: GREETINGS FROM PERU!

 Revisiting: GREETINGS FROM PERU!

   Another great post from close to 15 years ago. Really felt like anything was possible back then. This is about as adventurous as I've got over the years.  Going to New England twice a year for the past decade plus has really put the kibosh on trips that aren't a few hours distant from there. 

Published 1/3/11
GREETINGS FROM PERU 



IT IS COLD AND RAINY BUT BEAUTIFUL.

The Incan Cross (1/10/11)


    You can't let relativism interfere with the basic capacity to compare one group of people to another. The categories you pick and ways you talk about those categories influence the value of your observations. For example, it's easy to talk about the ways people are different but such observations are likely to place groups of people in different status positions. Religious differences, social classes, economic disparity.
    Cultural comparison was very much on my mind during my recent trip to Peru. As a geographic place, the tourist region around the city of Cusco is a rich cultural environment. The history of multiple levels of cultural conflict plays out on a physically remarkable environment. While you're there it's perfectly appropriate to consider the history of the place.
    The larger area of Peru and Ecuador was a culturally rich place in the Pre-Columbian era. Advanced civilizations were making anthropomorphic pottery and sophisticated human featured sculpture before Christ was born. The Incans were heirs to this broad, long running tradition in much the same way the Romans were heirs to the Greek/Mediterranean civilization.
    The larger Peruvian civilization was handicapped because of a lack of writing. History mostly requires the presence of written language BEFORE events can be considered history. Thus, for civilizations without written language, you are looking at physical remains. Thus, the Incans are at the very cusp, with no written language tradition but physical remains that are top of the table. Most compelling for me is the symbol of the Incan Cross, pictured above at the Sun Temple in Pisaq. Wikipedia calls it the Chakana:
    The Chakana (or Inca Cross, Chakana) symbolizes for Inca mythology what is known in other mythologies as the World Tree, Tree of Life and so on. The stepped cross is made up of an equal-armed cross indicating the cardinal points of the compass and a superimposed square. The square represents the other two levels of existence. The three levels of existence are Hana Pacha(the upper world inhabited by the superior gods), Kay Pacha, (the world of our everyday existence) and Ucu or Urin Pacha (the underworld inhabited by spirits of the dead, the ancestors, their overlords and various deities having close contact to the Earth plane). The hole through the centre of the cross is the Axis by means of which the shaman transits the cosmic vault to the other levels. It also represents Cuzco, the center of the Incan empire, and the Southern Cross constellation. (WIKIPEDIA) Pretty sophisticated concept, no writing required to explain it necessary. You come across that in a ruin at 10,000 feet up and you get it.

Revisiting: Mesopotamia: Reason, Writing and the Gods by Jean Bottero

 Revisiting:

 Mesopotamia: Reason, Writing and the Gods 

by Jean Bottero

Published 9/17/09

   I used to get into some heavy duty topics!  Book Reviews like this one remind me that there was a whole thing I did where I read through a bibliography of books about the history of the Middle Ages, but before I had a blog, let alone a blog focused on books.  I think ancient history, and ancient pre-history is such an interesting subject.  I believe that you can look at linguistics as a kind of proxy for history- that's a theme I've pursued here via writings about the Indo-Europeans. 

Sumerian/Akkadian figures

Books Discussed

History Begins at Sumer by Samuel Kramer
Mesopotamia: Reason, Writing and the Gods by Jean Bottero,
translated by Zainab Banhrani and Marc Van De Mieroop

       I think in terms of cheap hipster points, ancient Mesopotamia is under-developed. Who occupies the field? A couple of death metal bands and the Vice documentary film about contemporary heavy-metal Iraqi guys? It's fertile ground, simply because a) there is a lot of it b) it's really strange c) no one has heard of it. Meme gold.
       However, there are potholes on the road to wisdom, and History Begins at Sumer, previously reviewed here, is one of them. What a boring book! I found it excruciating. History Begins at Sumer is the academic equivalent of a decades old Readers Digest: Dumbing it Down American Style. History Begins at Sumer is dated and not worth reading.
        On the other hand, Bottero's Mesopotamia, published in 1995 by the University of Chicago, is literally a breath of fresh air, and is clearly aware of History Begins at Sumer's popularity, and basically mocks it, which is awesome, because he's right. Even though it is translated from the French, the simplicity and clarity of Bottero's argument is more akin to the Annalist movement of French history then the stinking wasteland of French cultural theory/philosophy.
     Which all goes to say: READ BOTTERO'S BOOK AND NOT HISTORY BEGINS AT SUMER!!!

Unworthy Republic (2020) by Claudio Saunt

Audiobook Review

Unworthy Republic: 

The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory (2020)

by Claudio Saunt

        Unworthy Republic is a 2020 Bancroft Prize (US history) winner about the removal of Native American tribes from the Eastern half of the United States.   It is a sad, sordid history, not simply limited to the more-or-less well known "Trail of Tears" but including similar removals from the old Northwest (today's Ohio/Wisconsin/Michigan) and Florida.  

        In law school I learned about the legal back and forth- tribes desperately seeking relief from the Congress and the United States Supreme Court over a period of decades with limited/no success.  I know about the result- the presence of dozens of tribes in the eastern half of Oklahoma who had no historical ties to the area.  What I learned from this book were the voices of those involved- the leaders of civilized tribes who thought the Federal government would protect them.  The bureaucrats and adventurers who were tasked with implementing the removal.  The state authorities in places like Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and Florida, who come off the worst of the bunch and the voices of Americans from outside the South and old Northwest, who often stood in opposition to these policies.

    What strikes me most about the events in Unworthy Republic is the blood-thirstyness of the local population in places like Georgia, where fear mongering and simple greed let to the greatest atrocities- a clear-cut case of ethnic cleansing if not genocide.  It's also hard not to link the events of Unworthy Republic with the large trends in American democracy during the same period, namely the rise of Andrew Jackson and enfranchisement of non-property holding Americans, making the dispossession of Native groups an attractive prospect for poor white Americans.

The Return (2016) by Hisham Matar

 100 Best Books of the 21st Century: New York Times

The Return (2016)

by Hisham Matar

#89

  Exploring the non-fiction selections on the New York Times recent 100 Best Books of the 21st Century has been a real pleasure and a good break from fiction.  The fiction portion, on the other hand, fills me with a vague dread mostly because the titles I haven't read on that part of the list represent conscious decisions rather than a lack of familiarity.   It's almost all domestic fiction and there is just only so much of that I can take in a given time period, which is currently filled by the prevalence of the same genre on the 1,001 Novels: A Library fo America list.   It took me awhile to make it to The Return, the non-fiction work by novelist Matar about his decades long quest to obtain closure regarding the whereabouts of his Dad, who was kidnapped out of Egypt by the Quaddaffi regime and held for years at a nightmarish Libyan prison.

  This is the only non-fiction title on the 100 Best Books List to not have an Audiobook edition available via the library app so I read the hard copy on my Kindle.   The Return is both a coming-of-age book about the author, a family biography and a history for a place- Libya- that is poorly documented.  For example, this book was the first I'd heard of the Italo-Turkic war between the Italians and the Ottoman Turks before World War I.  It's important to Libya because it marks the beginning of the Italian colonial period.   Matar keeps the book moving along- 272 pages is sufficient to tell a story that could have been at least three separate books.  Not surprising that it was a Pulitzer Prize winner after it was released.

Seaweed Chronicles (2018) by Susan Hand Shetterly

 Book Review

Seaweed Chronicles (2018)

by Susan Hand Shetterly

  I bought this book at an independent bookstore in Castine, Maine, several years back on vacation and read it this year, also on vacation.  Seaweed Chronicles is a great example of what I call "New Yorker lit" or books that seem like a New Yorker feature extended to book length.  Here, the subject is seaweed, its uses and (potential) abuses, written from a variety of perspectives of people who live on the coast of Maine.   It starts out from the perspective one might expect: efforts by locals and multi-national corporations to harvest what might seem like a limitless resource.  Seaweed is a valuable commodity, though not a monolithic one, as I learned from Seaweed Chronicles there are several different types of seaweed, depending on where you are.  

Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (2010) by Tony Judt

 Audiobook Review

Postwar (2010)

by Tony Judt

  Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 was itself published in 2010, which puts it on the edge of being out-of-date, but I couldn't turn down the opportunity to listen to the 40 hours plus Audiobook.  It took me months, because like many titles in the LA public library system, they have one or two permanent copies of many titles, and you have to wait months between check-outs.  I'm not complaining about it, just saying it happens with longer books.  At one point I had thought that the book blog aspect of this endeavor would be focused on history, not fiction/literature, but there is a real lack of content, as the kids would say.  Cutting edge history is the domain of for-pay journals or graduate student work that isn't published.  Popular history in the United States basically means books about "the wars" (Revolutionary, Civil, World I, World War II, Vietnam) or "the presidents."   Leading writers of popular history in the US would have to include Bill O'Reilly, again, not complaining, just describing the market for history books in this country.

   Subjects that fall outside those two categories are few and far between.  I use the Bancroft Prize, which focuses on the Americas, and the Pulitzer for proxies on history books that are making the scene, but for subjects outside the US, it is even worse, in terms of supply.  Thus, Postwar, despite or perhaps because of its length, is a rare treat, a contemporary work of popular history about a subject that isn't America based (although the US does pop up relentlessly in the context of the subject), writing about areas (Central, Eastern, Southern Europe) that I don't here much about on a day-to-day basis.   In print, Postwar is 960 pages long, and I feel like that wouldn't include an index let alone footnotes.  Maybe an Index.   Judt starts at the end of World War II and methodically works his way forward, area by area, using contemporary, specialist sources to write a book for generalists (although, 960 pages calls that term into question). 

  Were it not for the Audiobook, I'm quite sure I would have never read  Postwar in print, if only because, closing in on turning 50, I believe that physically reading a book over 500 pages, in paperback or hardback, is a real ordeal.

    Trying to say anything about Postwar is tough because the subject is so large- like reading a book called History and then being asked to describe it.   The major trend is the rise and fall of Communism, though Judt's major contribution to this subject matter is combining that more familiar story with the first chapter of the European Union story.    The cut-off point in time leaves the reader wondering whether the accession of Eastern and Central European states will prove a success, and with the Ukranian conflict not even on the horizon. 

   I guess, the parts I found most relevant to the present situation were the chapters about the rise of post-communist populist/nationalist movements in central, southern and eastern Europe.  Postwar cuts off too soon to cover Brexit, and Le Pen makes a brief, late appearance, but the stuff about the split between the Czechs and the Slovaks, the situation in Hungary- where Victor Orban appears as a rabble-rouser, not yet in power and the conflict in the former Yugoslavia all gave me pause.   Another theme, or rather, absence of a theme, is any premonition that Ukraine and Russia would begin a now decade long war over...?.?>? only four years after the publication date.

  With the benefit of reading Postwar I would now argue that the war was precipitated by the eastern reach of the E.U., and Russia's feelings about that vis a vis Ukraine, which for many is considered a part of Russia and whose independence movement is fraught with Nazi's, Neo-Nazi's and the far right.  I could go on. 

Native Nation (2024) by Kathleen DuVal

 Audiobook Review

Native Nation (2024)

by Kathleen DuVal

  I like my history books like I like my coffee... magisterial.  Native Nations won a Pulitzer Prize last year, which is why I looked up the Audiobook on the library app and checked it out.  The Audiobook version clocks in at over 20 hours, and it look me a couple of check-outs and months of waiting in between to finish up, but it really is a great gloss on the history of the Native People in North America.  DuVal's major scholarly achievement is blending part of the argument made David Graeber in The Dawn of Everything, where Graeber, drawing on other scholars, argued for the historical choices made by allegedly non historical peoples (pre contact Native Americans) and essentially postulated that the "contemporary" Native American political scene when the Europeans showed up was the result of a centuries old rebellion against the Cahokia regime in the area of modern day St. Louis, and a similar rebellion in a similar time frame against a different group.   The idea is that the Native American who made contact with Europeans were not ignorant savages, but a collection of peoples who had rejected the kind of hierarchy and consolidation that won the day in the "old world" lands of Europe and Asia. 

    Graeber offers this analysis mostly as a theory, but DuVal fills in that gap with actual chapters from actual Native American history- she goes all over the map, with particular highlights coming from the Southeast and Southwest.   If you read Graeber, and are looking to follow up his Native American supported arguments, this Pulitzer Prize winning history book is worth reading.

The Power Broker (1974) by Robert A. Caro

 Audiobook Review

The Power Broker (1974)

by Robert A. Caro

   Clocking in at over 60 hours, the three volume Audiobook edition of Robert A. Caro's seminal masterpiece, The Power Broker, a comprehensive biography of New York park-and-freeway man Robert Moses, is certainly one of the most epic Audiobooks I've ever heard.   The Audiobook is broken into three volumes; each volume is a little over 20 hours long.   I wrote a review for the first volume back in September of last year.  Volume two didn't get the break-out treatment because, like many Volume 2's in a three-volume set, it didn't seem like it warranted a stand-alone post.   Roughly speaking, volume 1 is his rise, volume 2 is his hey-day and volume 3 is his decline and fall.  Reader, what does it tell you that I couldn't wait for the fall, and the last ten hours of the third volume was my favorite piece of the entire endeavor. 

  I was reflecting on The Power Broker, and Caro's achievement, during a recent trip to the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin Texas (thanks Dad!) Caro has famously been trying to finish the fifth volume of his LBJ biography for years- the last update was in 2023 after his longtime publisher Robert Gottlieb died.   Both Moses and LBJ symbolize a very specific type of 20th century man, the non-ideological Government guy who saw the rise of big government as an opportunity to obtain the specific type of success both craved.   One of the ironies that plays out again and again over the cours of all three volumes of The Power Broker is that Moses, the ultimate public servant, held the actual voting public in the kind of contempt one associates with modern day plutocrats like Peter Thiel.    He did not brook criticism or compromise, which is astonishing for a man who spent his professional career rooting up large parts of New York City, displacing thousands, and rebuilding it in his image (parks and freeways to get to those parks). 

  His path to power was unique to the rise of big government in the 20th century, he was able to master the internal bureaucracy of New York state and city- serving as the head of the Tri Borough Bridge Commission in addition to a dozen over entities in his prime AND he served as the link between New York and Federal freeway fund.  If he was outmaneuvered at the state level, he could shut off the funding at the federal level, and his opponents knew it.

  Ultimately, he was only bested by two men, one he survived and the other who ended him.  The first was Franklin Roosevelt, who first encountered Robert Moses when he was the Governor of New York and Moses was in his early, progressive phase associated with his parks era.  Roosevelt owed nothing of his rise to Moses, and was secure enough in his power not to be cowed by the others backroom machinations.  A final showdown wasn't required because Roosevelt went to Washington DC, and spending on public works became a preferred path out of the recession, and Moses was a position to spend more of that money than anyone else in the country, so they needed each other and that was enugh.

   The other, Nelson Rockefeller, spelled the end for Moses, who was in his late 70's and early 80's when Rockefeller appeared on the scene.  As spelled out by Caro, the enduring key to Moses' unassailability within the New York state and city bureaucracy was as the counterparty for all the bond that the state had issued via his various positions.  Basically, you couldn't do anything to Moses because the bond holders viewed it as tampering with their bonds.  Fortunately, the largest holder of those bonds was the brother of Nelson Rockefeller, so he could do whatever he wanted to Moses and the bondholders wouldn't do shit to stop him.

Published 9/11/24

Audiobook Review

The Power Broker: Volume 1 (1974)

Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

by Robert Caro

Read by Robertson Dean

(2011)

   Lists like the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America and 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die commonly keep fiction and non-fiction books separate.  For example, in the two lists I just cited, there are zero works of non fiction.  At least with the 1,001 Novels project the bias is in the title, but the 1,001 Books list has no excuse.   One recent list to buck this separation is the recently published New York Times Top Books of the 21st Century, which combines fiction and non-fiction.   Such an approach might have benefited the 1,001 Novels project.   You can see why if you listen to the Audiobook of The Power Broker: Volume 1, which is just about as New York a book as one could possibly imagine.  Indeed, there is an argument that its inclusion is required if a reader wants to really know New York, city and state.  No single person has had a greater impact on how the entire state LOOKS than Moses.   

  Volume 1, which lasts 22 hours in Audiobook format, handles his rise, and takes us to the cusp of his monumental bridge, tunnel and freeway building projects that remade Manhattan in his image.  We learn that Moses came from a patrician upbringing- a key element of his success is that he never needed to make money from his work and that his vision was inspired by the idea of a non-partial bureaucratic technocrat, who overcame all obstacles to benefit "the people."  Caro presents it as an idea he came up with while he was doing post-graduate studies in Oxford University, and his school-child dreams of a core of highly disciplined, uncorruptible state employees was about as far from the facts on the ground in New York City as could be possible.

   After some early career missteps, he was rescued from obscurity by a friendship with Belle Moskowitz, a reformer and early supporter of future Governor of New York Al Smith.  Moskowitz recommended Robert Moses to Smith as a man who could get things done, as someone who could help Smith implement the progressive ideas he wanted to advance to distance himself from the Tammany Hall political machine from which he sprang and get him in the running for a run at President.  Smith and Moses were an odd couple to be sure, and the depiction of their friendship is the unquestionable highlight of the book.   

   In Volume 1, most of the action is stage setting, as Moses begins to develop his vision of parks and freeways to drive to those parks.  Most of the action takes place on the tip of Long Island, where Moses spent the 20's and 30's in endless litigation with the land barons who owned all the property out there.  Parks were really popular with the general public and the press, particularly when those standing in the way are wealthy captain of industry.  It's clear both from the action of the book and Caro's relentless foreshadowing that the combination of power and lack of public accountability would turn Moses into a monster, but by the end of Volume 1 that moment is still on the far-ish horizon.

Random Family (2003) by Adrian LeBlanc

 100 Best Books of the 21st Century (New York Times)

Random Family (2003)

by Adrian LeBlanc

#25

       This might be THE most representative book from the New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century list, a 432 page in depth exploration of the life and times of a loosely related group of New Yorkers who are knee deep in the crack epidemic.  You've got Coco Rodriguez, the main character, a woman who manages to have four children by three different men in between the ages of 17 and 24.  You've got Jessica Martinez, the consort of a notorious crack kingpin who is sentenced to life in Federal Prison during the book, and who herself serves a ten year federal prison sentence over the course of Random Family.  You've got Coco and Jessica's respective families, who are equally filled with child sexual abuse, drug usage, child neglect and early/frequent exposure to domestic violence.

   As someone who deals with individuals who are enmeshed with the Federal Criminal Justice system because of their participation in drug trafficking, I am well familiar with the social milieus that produce the characters in this book, and everything that they say or do was familiar to me- listening to the Audiobook of Random Family was like listening to a 20 hour federal probation report, where probation officers try to get to the heart of the same questions that LeBlanc frames in 15 pages instead of 400.

   A common theme, both in Random Family and my own professional experience, is disordered living.  A one parent household headed by Mom, or a serial household with Mom and a succession of partner's, is common.  It's been my own observation, borne out at length in Random Family, is that people who get into organized criminal activity do it because a) they never think it will end up with them serving decade long prison sentences b) they literally do not have a single other idea about what do besides crime. The men in this book, most of whom spend the entirety of the book in Federal or State Prison make these decisions when they are very young and even as they spend their ten, twenty year or life in prison sentences, the level of self-reflection is minimal because there were never any other choices to be made.

  The women on the other hand, again, based both on the experiences depicted in Random Family and my own professional experiences, is that women often believe that the only thing they have to offer is their body and that a child is their best chance of forging a lasting relationship with a providing male. When this inevitably fails to happen, the man disappears, and the woman is left with the child.  Coco, at the center of this book, is incapable of making a reasoned decision or really even looking after her own interesting, rather she is buffeted by the day-to-day chaos of the consequences of her decision to have four children with three different men.

  Coco is, in a sense, amazing in that she manages to keep her tattered family together through the entire book.  Jessica, on the other hand, manages to get impregnated by a guard while in prison and foists the children off on her long-suffering mother, also caring for some of her other children which she left behind to serve her decade long prison sentence.   The men are equally despicable and pathetic, the tattered flotsam of late-stage capitalism, going nowhere and doing nothing.  What, one wonders, is the end game for anyone in Random Family, except as a burden to the state and incubator of intergenerational trauma.   Those looking for answers will find none here and the author doesn't bother to try- it's not that type of book.